The wind clawed across the Altai plateau like a living thing.
Lana pulled her scarf tighter around her face, the fabric damp from melted snow and her own shallow breaths. Their descent into the valley had been brutal—four hours by rusted Soviet truck through permafrost and scree. The air thinned with every meter downward, pressure shifting like something ancient exhaling beneath the earth.
They were alone. Truly alone.
Jason had stayed behind in Ulaanbaatar, running interference through the old Noctis backchannels. Kraven had frozen the company's satellite accounts after their departure, but Kieran's fallback plan—an untraceable biotech grant issued to a shell corporation—had bought them three days of silence.
"Dr. Juno Zelen lives in the ruins ahead," Kieran said, pointing through the white fog. "She doesn't speak unless she's spoken to. And she never lies."
"How do you know her?"
"I saved her son," Kieran said simply. "From Lysander."
Lana blinked. The name hung between them. Cold. Heavy. Still raw.
Kieran didn't elaborate.
---
The outpost was carved directly into the mountainside, marked only by a spiral of bone set into the rock like a primitive sundial. They ducked beneath a low archway, boots crunching over loose grit and rusted sigils. Inside, warmth clung to the stone, unnatural in such frozen air. The walls were lined with wolf statues, each standing on hind legs, arms crossed over chests, faces half-human.
"This isn't a vault," Lana said. "It's a tomb."
"Same thing," said a new voice.
Dr. Zelen stood in the corridor's shadows, wrapped in a wolf-pelt coat, gray streaks cutting through her dark braid. Her eyes were a pale, silvery blue—like ice seen through fogged glass.
"You brought the girl," she said to Kieran. "The mother who isn't."
"I brought the match," Kieran said. "Open it."
Dr. Zelen studied Lana for a long moment. Then she reached into her coat and pulled a blade—a scalpel etched with symbols. She handed it to Lana.
"First blood opens the threshold."
Lana took the blade.
The metal hummed in her grip.
---
The vault door responded instantly.
As Lana's blood touched the ancient crest carved into its surface, the symbols ignited—crimson, then white, then a pulse of silver that echoed back into her veins. The door opened inward, hissing as warmth and air pressure changed like lungs exhaling.
Inside, darkness waited.
Lana stepped forward.
The room responded.
Every surface lit with faint veins of bioluminescent script. Glyphs crawled along the stone walls, embedding themselves in patterns—familiar and yet utterly alien.
"I know this," Lana whispered. "I don't know how, but I do."
"Because it's in you," Zelen said. "The code. The memory. The hunger."
Kieran stepped beside her. "This place was the first seat of the bloodline. Before Noctis. Before nations. Before history."
Lana reached out.
The walls pulsed beneath her palm.
And then the world went white.
---
She stood in a clearing beneath a blood moon.
Not herself.
A woman taller, older, crowned in bone and silver.
Wolves knelt around her—some bipedal, some full-beast, all bearing ritual scars. Before her, a newborn creature was placed in a cradle of fire.
A voice rang out: "She will carry the last flame."
Then the fire screamed.
And Lana fell.
---
She came to gasping on the stone floor, sweat soaking her shirt, wrists twitching.
"You saw it," Zelen said. "The genetic echo."
"It wasn't just memory," Lana said. "It was… coded instinct."
Kieran helped her to her feet. "You felt the line. The First Flame."
"She was my ancestor."
"She was all of ours," Zelen murmured. "But only one can remember her whole."
---
They walked deeper into the vault.
Statues flanked every chamber, their eyes carved from obsidian and old bone. In one alcove, a mural depicted the fall of a city under a red eclipse—figures bearing uncanny resemblance to modern hybrid shifters in agony, their forms dissolving into smoke.
"This wasn't just a bloodline," Kieran said. "It was a caste. A ruling order."
Lana stepped into the center of the sanctum.
A table rose from the floor—formed from petrified bone and volcanic glass. At its heart rested a sealed vessel shaped like a fang, etched in a language no living mind could fully translate.
"What is that?" she whispered.
"The key to purity," Zelen said. "Or extinction."
---
Kieran's gaze locked onto a carving behind the vessel.
It showed two figures: one wearing the crest of the Alpha Prime, the other cloaked in thorns.
The caption below read in archaic runes:
"One shall carry the god. The other shall kill her."
Lana stared at it.
"Is that about me?"
Kieran didn't answer.
"Tell me."
"I don't know," he lied.
Zelen moved away silently. Kieran remained still.
"I saw Lysander," Lana said. "In the echo. Or someone who looked like him."
"He was there," Kieran admitted. "He was part of the first experiment. He volunteered."
"Volunteered?"
"He wanted to be reborn. In the image of gods."
"Did you?"
Kieran turned away. "No. I wanted to protect what we had."
"Then why did you let my mother die?"
He faced her.
"I tried to stop them. She chose you over all of us. And they hated her for it."
"You mean Lysander."
"I mean everyone."
---
A tremor shook the vault.
The air grew thick.
From the shadows behind the mural, claw marks emerged.
Fresh.
"Someone's been here," Lana said.
"Recently," Kieran muttered. "Too recently."
They turned as the lights dimmed.
A voice echoed through the chamber.
Specter.
"You walk in bones like they're books, reading history you helped write. How arrogant."
She wasn't there. Not physically.
Just her voice—woven into the DNA triggers of the vault itself.
"I was here before you," she said. "I left something behind."
Lana's skin chilled.
Kieran stepped between her and the center.
"What did you leave?"
"Nothing you can kill," she said. "But something that will kill you."
The vessel began to glow.
Jason's voice crackled through their comm units. "You need to get out—Kraven just issued a clean-sweep order. Full liquidation. She's calling it a genetic plague emergency."
Lana backed away from the vessel.
Kieran grabbed it.
The glow stopped.
Zelen opened a side passage.
"This way. Now."
---
They emerged into the cold night under the blackened sky.
Above them, the moon was red.
But not blood-red.
It was eclipsed.
"I thought we weren't due for one," Lana said.
"We're not," Kieran replied.
Zelen sealed the vault behind them with an incantation Lana felt in her teeth. A wall of ice reformed over the entrance like it had never existed.
Jason's voice came again. "Kraven's purge squad is in transit. You have twelve hours."
Lana looked down at the vessel.
It vibrated faintly.
Inside, a small creature curled. Sleeping.
Not LC-07.
Something else.
"What is it?" Lana asked.
Kieran met her eyes.
"A prototype," he said. "Older than LC-07."
She stared at him.
"You knew?"
"I suspected."
He stepped closer.
"You were never just Evelyn's daughter," he said. "You're something more."
She didn't pull away.
Instead, she leaned in.
"Then stop trying to protect me like I'm glass."
He kissed her.
Not out of dominance. Not out of fear.
But because everything else had been stripped away.
And only the truth remained.
---
They took shelter in Zelen's side bunker, deep beneath layers of ice and stone. A single oil heater hissed softly, casting long orange shadows across the narrow chamber. Their coats hung near the door, drying. They sat across from each other, eyes adjusting, breath slow.
Kieran was silent for a long time. Then he said, "I don't know how to be anything but a weapon. But I want you to see the man who was there before they sharpened me."
Lana didn't answer with words. She took his hand.
His fingers were calloused, but trembled slightly.
"I saw him today," she whispered. "In the way you held the child. In the way you didn't run from the truth."
He swallowed. "I was afraid you'd hate me. That you'd see the things I've done and decide I'm not worth standing beside."
Lana moved across the space between them. Slowly. Carefully.
She brushed her fingers along his jaw. "You're wrong."
When their lips met again, it wasn't desperate—it was claiming, but also yielding. A collision of fire and sanctuary.
Kieran's hands came to her waist, reverent. Lana's breath caught as she straddled his thighs, her body warm from within.
They didn't undress quickly. They peeled layers away like armor.
Scars. Each of them had so many. They kissed them. Traced them. Whispered their origins.
"I'm not afraid of what's in you," Kieran said. "I'm afraid of what I'll do to protect it."
Lana kissed his chest, over his heart. "Then don't protect it. Stand with it."
They didn't sleep. Not entirely. Between love and heat and whispered truths, the hours passed.
When dawn threatened the mountains, they stood side by side, dressed in silence.
The creature in the vessel stirred.
The future would arrive like a storm.
But for once, they would face it as one.
---